Digi Skills Bsc - Revising Graphic Literacy in Bsc Architectural Design Education through a Software-Based Pedagogic Approach. A Shared Pilot Experience at the Politecnico di Milano

Inspired by the UNESCO/UIA Charter for Architectural Education (Tokyo 2011), since 2020 the digital literacy programme Digi Skills BSc (4 ECTS) is offered to the 2nd year of the Bachelor in Architectural Design at the Politecnico di Milano. Addressed to students who already have a background in classic graphic representation, it aims at experimenting with a paradigm shift from analog to digital, in line with both traditional disciplinary fundamentals and the operational routines characterizing architectural design processes and workflows nowadays. Given the relevance of space in architectural education, 3D geometry based modeling is the essential chapter in the syllabus. However, an introduction to the parametric and BIM workspaces, as well as some basics of data input (by device, from geoportals and point clouds) and output (visual editing, graphic and physical prototyping) are included as well. Dealing with a variety of software programs and file formats responds to the most challenging UNESCO/UIA expectation that «digital fluency» is encouraged in architectural education. It also led to excellent feedbacks by the about 1.000 students involved. Engaging young generations of scholars from various Universities in the tutorship of the classes (MSc graduates, PhD students and graduates, young researchers), recruited through a national annual call, also published on the UID webpage, was a bet. After two years, it seems to have coagulated into a novel promising research group, which, among other things, also suggested writing this co-authored paper.